Description
Leaving Notice Popup for External Links allows you to retain visitors and manage outbound traffic effectively. This lightweight, user-friendly WordPress plugin displays a stylish modal warning whenever a user clicks a link pointing to an external website.
By interrupting the exit flow, you give your visitors a moment to reconsider, effectively reducing bounce rates and keeping users engaged with your content longer. It is also an essential tool for affiliate marketers, government sites, and educational portals that need to provide legal disclaimers stating they are not responsible for third-party content.
Why use this plugin?
* Boost SEO & Security: Automatically add rel="nofollow", rel="noopener", and rel="noreferrer" attributes to external links to protect your site’s SEO juice and prevent security vulnerabilities.
* Brand Consistency: Fully customize the popup title, warning message, and button colors to match your website’s design identity.
* Smart Filtering: Use our new advanced filters to show the popup only on specific Page IDs, or enable it conditionally for Archives and Categories.
* Trusted Domains: Easily whitelist affiliate partners or sister sites so users can navigate to them without interruption.
Key Features
- Fully Customizable Notice: Change the title, message, and button text according to your preferences
- Button Customization: Choose colors for both “Continue” and “Stay” buttons
- Domain Whitelist: Exclude specific domains from triggering the notice
- URL Whitelist: Exclude specific URLs from triggering the notice
- Responsive Design: Works perfectly on all devices and screen sizes
- Lightweight: Minimal impact on page load time
- Easy Setup: No coding required, just activate and customize
Use Cases
- Inform visitors when they are leaving your site
- Provide disclaimer for external websites you don’t control
- Prevent accidental navigation away from important processes
- Meet legal requirements for certain jurisdictions
- Increase awareness of external link navigation
Privacy
This plugin does not collect or store any personal data from your visitors.
My other small free plugins projects on WordPress
- Super Web Share – For Native social sharing
- Copy Link to Heading – quickly add a copy icon near to your headings
- Social Profile Frame Generator – Custom Social Media Frames Creator
Screenshots
Plugin settings page with option to customize the button color, text and whitelist configuration 
Frontend popup when an external link is clicked 
Screenshot of the SEO and security attributes settings for the external links like nofollow, noopener and noreferrer
Installation
- Upload the
leaving-notice-popup-for-external-linksfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Go to Settings > Leaving Notice Popup to configure the plugin
FAQ
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Will this work with all themes?
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Yes, Leaving Notice Popup is designed to be compatible with all WordPress themes. The popup is added to the page dynamically and does not interfere with your theme’s design.
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Does this work for all external links?
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The plugin works for all standard links that lead to external domains. It will not trigger for special links like mailto:, tel:, javascript: or anchor (#) links.
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Can I exclude certain domains from triggering the notice?
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Yes, in the plugin settings you can add domains to a whitelist. Links to these domains will not trigger the leaving notice popup.
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Can I exclude specific URLs from triggering the notice?
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Yes, you can add specific URLs to a whitelist in the plugin settings. These exact URLs will not trigger the leaving notice popup.
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Can I show the notice only on specific pages?
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Yes, you can use the
externallinknotice_allowed_pagesfilter for specific pages (Pages, Posts, Custom Post Types).
Example:
add_filter( ‘externallinknotice_allowed_pages’, function( $pages ) {
return array( 10, 25 ); // Replace with your Page IDs
} );
Note: This will ONLY work for singular pages/posts. It will not work for archives or categories. -
Can I show the notice on Archives, Categories, or Home page?
-
Yes, for more advanced control, use the
externallinknotice_is_enabledfilter.
Example:
add_filter( ‘externallinknotice_is_enabled’, function( $enabled ) {
if ( is_home() || is_archive() ) {
return true;
}
return $enabled;
} ); -
Will the notice appear when clicking on internal links?
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No, the popup only appears when users click on links that lead to domains other than your own website.
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Is the plugin GDPR compliant?
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Yes, the plugin does not collect, store, or process any personal data.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Leaving Notice Popup For External Links” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Leaving Notice Popup For External Links” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.2
5th January 2026
* Added externallinknotice_allowed_pages filter to restrict popup to specific Page IDs, read FAQ for more details
* Added externallinknotice_is_enabled filter for advanced control (e.g. Archives, Home, Taxonomies)
1.1
10th June 2025
* Added accessibility (Learned this from the WCEU live website review session)
* Added option to configure the external links with SEO and security attributes like nofollow, noopener and noreferrer
* Already existing “rel” attributes for the external links will now be passed to the Continue button rel atttributes within the popup modal window.
1.0.1
9th June 2025
* Minor enhancements to the settings page
1.0
2nd June 2025
* Initial release